Comic Relief MAANDA - African coffee special initiative

Although women provide up to 70% of the labour in East African coffee production, their work often goes unrecognised and unfairly rewarded. East African cooperatives also struggle to break into competitive speciality markets, despite enjoying ideal conditions for growing quality coffee. To tackle this, Twin has partnered with seven East African cooperatives across four countries (Rwanda, DRC, Uganda and Malawi) to develop a holistic project that encompasses quality, financial management, governance, certification, marketing and sustainable agriculture with gender as a cross-cutting theme.

Women’s empowerment

At the start of the project, a comprehensive gender assessment was conducted to inform the development of tailor-made gender programmes in partnership with each cooperative. At the household level, projects will be designed to facilitate women’s access to assets (including land), support their earning capability, and promote joint decision-making in the home. At the organisational level, gender policies and female leadership programmes will be developed and at the market level, ‘women’s coffee’ offers will be developed and promoted. The project will also advocate for the rights of women farmers to the coffee industry.

Breaking into speciality markets

Not only is consistently high-quality coffee and a high standard of service expected in speciality markets, East Africa is little-known by buyers as a quality coffee origin. To address both the production and market challenges, this five-year project aims to build an alliance of strong East African organisations to establish a presence in high-value speciality markets. The aim is to raise standards across the board, while playing particular attention to priority areas at each organisation and ensuring progress is inclusive of women. The alliance will also support cross-learning between organisations to transfer skills from established to new cooperatives.